'Understanding Environmental Philosophy', by Andrew Brennan and Y. S. Lo

Brennan, Andrew and Y. S. Lo, Understanding Environmental Philosophy, Durham: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2010, pp. vi + 234, £14.99 (paperback). Brennan and Lo's book meets well the aims of the ser...

intrinsic value, direct and indirect duties, anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism, all of which is well and good. Yet a subsequent distinction the authors draw between strong and weak versions of anthropocentrism describes a continuum regarding just how much intrinsic value a particular view attributes to non-human entities [11]. Although intelligible in itself, drawing the distinction in this way is potentially confusing for those introductory students who are also assigned Bryan Norton's seminal article, 'Environmental Ethics and Weak Anthropocentrism'. The form of weak anthropocentrism Norton famously advocates would count as a strong anthropocentrism on Brennan and Lo's distinction, because it denies any noninstrumental value to the non-human world.
Similar trouble in connecting the text with primary source materials could present a significant problem for those intending to use the book in class. As Brennan and Lo describe those progressive expansionist projects that attempt to justify the attribution of intrinsic value to different and various parts of the non-human world, the authors rely on and reconstruct the views of well-known theorists such as Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Paul Taylor, Aldo Leopold, Arne Naess, Baird Callicott, and Holmes Rolston III. Indeed, the work of these thinkers is extremely valuable and worthy of reference, but all too often Brennan and Lo do not provide direct references to the primary source material. If their summary overviews and the attribution of particular theses to these philosophers, whose work is widely reprinted and available, were accompanied by citations to the source material, it would be much easier to use the book as a companion reading in an environmental ethics course, enabling students to participate more directly in the discussion by comparing the authors' interpretation with alternative readings of the views held by the thinkers in question. A more charitable reading of Holmes Rolston, for example [117 and 198], would make it more difficult for the authors to level their criticism, and providing more citations would help forestall worries that they occasionally set up straw men, even if such characterizations may be defensible for their broader pedagogic purposes.
Whether or not people will find room to disagree with Brennan and Lo's reading of other theorists, two things are particularly commendable about their tour of the 'expanding circle of moral considerability', which is a useful but otherwise well-worn heuristic. First, before considering the extension of moral consideration beyond human beings, the authors address whether and which obligations we have to future human beings. It's a logical place to address intergenerational justice, that is, before raising worries about bias against members of other species. But it also raises deep and particularly thorny issues very early in the text. A utilitarian approach, for example, will count the interests of future people equally but faces at least two problems, each brought to light by Derek Parfit: the 'repugnant conclusion' that our duty is to bring more and more children into the world, so long as the life of each is barely worth living, and then the apparent paradox of Parfit's well-known Nonidentity Problem, which the authors are surprisingly confident to diagnose as resting on a 'simple mistake'.
Closing their treatment of future generations, Brennan and Lo motivate the search for a non-anthropocentric theory of value with a version of Richard Routley's classic 'last man' thought experiment: suppose a last group of human beings will not be able to reproduce and thus will be the last humans. What would be wrong if they arranged for all remaining life on Earth to be destroyed, once the very last one of them had died? Brennan and Lo present the issue as an inference to the best explanation: we should be morally outraged by this suggestion and the best explanation of our outrage would be that at least some features of the nonhuman world are valuable in their own right, that is, intrinsically. Thus, some features of the non-human world do bear a non-instrumental, or intrinsic, value [34].
Earlier the authors had explained that such abductive inference is 'widely used in environmental philosophy' [15]. And indeed they deploy this inference pattern often. But it seems that a straightforward alternative, and a valid form of argument, might be more convincing to beginning students of philosophy, coupled with some account of the role that moral intuitions and the search for broad reflective equilibrium play in moral reasoning. For example, if anthropocentrism is true (i.e., only human beings are intrinsically valuable), then destructive acts of the last people are not morally objectionable. But yet the intuition of most people is that such actions are morally objectionable. Therefore, it's not the case that only human beings bear an intrinsic value, or anthropocentrism is false. I think this move to a valid pattern of inference could be made in every case where the authors appeal to the best explanation. Perhaps, it will be said, one person's abduction just is another's modus tollens, but instructors will have to ask which they would prefer to explain to students in their introductory class.
After opening with a focus on the moral status of future generations, the second commendable feature of Brennan and Lo's treatment of the 'expanding circle' is how they close it. Whereas many similar accounts outline only one 'holistic' view beyond an individualistic biocentrism, Brennan and Lo treat us to considerably more. The breadth of possible ecocentric views is introduced first with Leopold's famous claim that humans are only 'plain members and citizens' of the biotic community. But visions of a more robust metaphysical holism are soon introduced, with references to the work of Holmes Rolston and James Lovelock. We're given both the pros and cons of Baird Callicott's subjectivist version of the Land Ethic, but this communitarian view is then deftly contrasted with Arne Naess's own version of a deep ecology, which relies on a conception of self-realization and identification with the extra-human world. Moreover, readers learn about related ideas in David Abram's 'radical ecology' (anchored in the phenomenological perspective of Merleau-Ponty), in alternative forms of place-based bio-regionalism, and finally in the 'new animists' like Freya Mathews, whose interests lie in reversing the scientific disenchantment of nature and who sometimes take inspiration from the ritual and ceremony of indigenous peoples. Outlining the scope of possible views beyond biocentric individualism is refreshing because it helps remind us that there often is a lot more at stake in environmental ethics than debates about the proper loci of intrinsic value in nature: that the possibility of a meaningful and engaged life with nature may include more than could be registered by mere bean-counting in an economy of value. In this context, I regret the authors did not pay more attention to work from the burgeoning field of environmental virtue ethics.
The chapter about secular foundations of value is interesting and strengthened by Lo's expertise on Hume. The chapter on what 'natural' means includes their treatment of philosophical issues in restoration ecology, tracing debates to which Brennan has contributed and on which Lo has published. But I found a certain tension in the book's style between passages clearly set out for introducing students to the basics, such as the author's treatment of 'reductio ad absurdum' arguments [51], and the level of detailed analysis carried out over various positions held in the literature on restoration, long passages which are likely to leave the beginning reader behind. But, perhaps, pitching to different audience levels by varying the difficulty can be justified, as many classrooms house students with a wide variety of talents and previous philosophical experience. The authors themselves describe the book's later chapters as more challenging, especially the last three [9]. Indeed the last chapter may be the most challenging, as it critically engages our received and quite comfortable consumer lifestyle.
Brennan and Lo have written a book that environmental philosophers should read. In most cases, it will broaden their understanding of the field. Then they can judge for themselves if and how it would advance their work teaching the discipline. This book is a collaboration between an analytic and a 'continental' philosopher. Naturally enough, therefore, it promises a comprehensive and balanced account of the notorious split between the two movements. Following a brief Introduction setting out their general perspective, Chase and Reynolds open with a discussion of the surprisingly few direct confrontations between leading proponents of the two camps, from Frege and Husserl to Derrida vs Searle. The second part explores some key methodological ideas and techniques that Chase and Reynolds take to set the two traditions apart. In the final part the authors discuss the respective approaches of the two movements to central topics such as ontology, truth, time, ethics and politics, and mind and body. Analytic versus Continental is well researched, highly informative and, above all, thoughtful. It makes a host of illuminating points concerning the history and methodology of nineteenth-and twentieth-century Western philosophy. It will be required reading for anyone seriously interested in a contrast that continues to play an important role in twenty-first-century academic philosophy and beyond. The prose is clear (especially given the need of presenting some arcane ideas and obscure texts of continental provenance). And the book employs a host of striking and revealing phrases. One stylistic feature, however, cries out for censure. Chase and Reynolds see fit to refer to analytic philosophers as 'analytics', presumably in analogy to 'continentals'. But continentals are simply inhabitants of the continent of Europe. The term is supremely misleading as a label for practitioners of 'continental philosophy', which is already enough of a misnomer, though one we may be stuck with. Accordingly, there is no excuse for introducing the hideous 'analytics', and even fervent opponents of the analytic/continental divide should hope that it survives this particular innovation. Another weakness of the book arises out of its ambition to survey two extensive philosophical movements from two contrasting perspectives. On occasion, the result is as of a whistle-stop tour through an enormous intellectual bazaar. Too many ideas, claims and counter-claims are on display, and it is inevitable that some of them are not presented in a manner that is as unassuming, comprehensive and clear as one might wish.

Allen Thompson
In the Introduction, Chase and Reynolds distinguish 'essentialist' and 'deflationary' approaches to the analytic/continental split. They characterize essentialism as ruling out 'the possibility of meaningful rapprochement', presumably because there are defining (constitutive) features of the two movements that are mutually exclusive. According to deflationists, by contrast, the difference is merely apparent or negligible and should be ignored.